Dennis Volkert: Can machines think??What do you think?

Monday

Feb 21, 2011 at 12:01 AMFeb 21, 2011 at 8:16 PM

Last week, an IBM contraption named Watson knocked off “Jeopardy!” studs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. That doesn’t really prove anything. We’ve known for years that computers outmanned humans when it comes to complex mathematical computation. In recent years, computers have become adept at beating humans at their own games — games such as chess and, now, “Jeopardy!”

Dennis Volkert

Last week, an IBM contraption named Watson knocked off “Jeopardy!” studs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

That doesn’t really prove anything. We’ve known for years that computers outmanned humans when it comes to complex mathematical computation. In recent years, computers have become adept at beating humans at their own games — games such as chess and, now, “Jeopardy!”

Watson’s accomplishment is, more or less, an extension of the Turing test, devised in the 1950s by Alan Turing, a former colleague from Cambridge. He wasn’t my former colleague, as I didn’t attend Cambridge and was not alive at the time. But I’m sure he was someone’s former colleague.

Turing proposed a way to test if a machine could think. Essentially, the test involves one machine and one human, with a “judge” or “interrogator” (also human) who asked questions to try to determine which is which. Both contestants are hidden from the judge and only typewritten answers are accepted. It is, after all, an intelligence test, not a beauty pageant.

If the judge cannot tell the difference, based on the responses, the machine has passed the test.

But that doesn’t really prove anything. Just because a machine passes the Turing test doesn’t suggest that it’s “almost human.” After all, being a person has little to do with intelligence.

Even if that were the case, there’s more to life than trivia and math. Just because a machine can answer questions well enough to fool a human judge doesn’t mean it’s ready to assume control of the world.

Human intelligence has additional layers that artificial intelligence has yet to match, no matter how many king-pawn-Alex Trebek accomplishments it can accumulate.

Suppose you asked Watson, “Who won Record of the Year at the 2011 Grammy Awards”?

If Watson answered, “Lady Antebellum,” it would be correct, but that doesn’t really prove anything. It’s considered common knowledge.

What if Watson’s response was more elaborate?

“Lady Antebellum won, which was a viable choice, considering the combination of critical acclaim, chart success and artistic quality.”

But that doesn’t really prove anything. Watson might have just tapped into information from metacritic, Billboard and Soundscan, and spewed something that sounded believable.

Now suppose Watson’s response was, “Oh, it was that #@!$*% Lady Antebellum. Oooh, how I hate that band,” then we’re on to something.

But that doesn’t really prove anything.

Dennis Volkert is features editor at the Sturgis (Mich.) Journal. Contact him at volkert@sturgisjournal.com.